Medical instruments, such as a patient monitor, are commonly used by medical caregivers. In such use, it is often helpful for the medical instruments to be arranged on a mobile cart to permit the instrument to be easily moved around within a facility. For example, a care provider can be assigned to a patient monitor, which the care provider can keep with him or her during a shift.
A drawback with using medical instruments in a mobile manner, however, is that electrical energy is not readily available. Medical instruments may have batteries, but the batteries may not last for an entire shift. Even if they do, a substantial amount of time is required to recharge the batteries. This may require that multiple medical instruments be obtained so that one of the instruments can be used while the other instrument is recharged, for example.